Liability issue remains after latest slip | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

Slipping at the weekend has scoured out more hillside between Anzac Pde and Wairere Rd in Wanganui East.

Yesterday the Wanganui District Council sent contractors to the area - between Georgetti Rd and Mt View Rd - where they cleaned up the pile of soil that had come away from the foot of the hillside.

But while the council sent in the clean-up squad, the matter of liability remains unresolved.

The latest events come four years after a massive slip left a big chunk of the hillside bare beneath Juliet Kojis' Wairere Rd property.

Mrs Kojis and her neighbours had written to the council suggesting some strengthening at the foot of the damaged hillside. But apart from some minor plantings, nothing had happened.

The Earthquake Commission inspected her property in 2006 and said she needed to carry out some drainage works, which she did. She had also carried out significant planting across the bulk of the exposed hillside.

But Mrs Kojis maintains the problem is water coming from vacant land directly behind her house. She said water continued to seep out of the hillside about halfway between her property and Anzac Pde.

Yesterday two Earthquake Commission staff inspected Mrs Kojis' property.

She said the commission staff had told her that the council was responsible for the first eight metres of land from the edge of the state highway.

"That brings it a reasonable distance up the hill towards my place," she said.

But Mrs Kojis said the matter of who was responsible for the land from the roadside, and how far that extended, had been at the heart of the argument when the slip last came.

She said she had not heard from the council since the latest slipping occurred last Tuesday.

Council engineers last week said the latest slip was "cosmetic in nature" and did not pose a threat to either properties above the slip nor to traffic using Anzac Pde.

They have recommended the area be replanted.

Mrs Kojis said the matter of liability was still not resolved and that there remained concern someone would be caught by any further slips.

The New Zealand Transport Agency said while it had responsibility for such events in rural areas, in urban areas, where the speed limit is less than 70km/h, the agency only looked after kerbside to kerbside and that responsibility for the remaining area fell on the local authority.